Middle Aged Thoughts from Scotland

Hope

It is rather a breezy day for a bike ride, but the sky is blue and the weekend is over. I have spent quite a bit of time this weekend with others, whether is has been our American visitors or commiserating with new and old friends. Spending time with others means that I am given stimulii for thoughts other than my own. This is a good thing because my thoughts are unable to move on from the grief of the EU referendum vote. As I lay in bed this morning, it came to me that what I am missing is hope. Hope that this will work out ok, hope that there is a path through this mess that leads to fresh clean air.

Perhaps I am depressed and cannot think straight, is that a good definition of grief? Each day people are looking at reasons for the result:

People share media clips of people saying they didn’t expect their vote to count.

We intellectualise about whether this is an anti-elite vote which gets confused with anti-intellectualism so that anybody with an ounce of informed opinion is dismissed as fear mongering.

It’s an anti-immigration vote;

it’s a vote for diverting money back into the UK rather than wasting it on Europe;

It’s because people believe that Europe controls us and tells us what to do;

It’s because we are being forced to take in people we don’t want, who take jobs and benefits.

And then there are the reasons why the result shouldn’t count:

It was too complex a problem for people to make informed decisions on;

The size of the voting margin isn’t enough to warrent such a massive policy change;

Cameron never should have allowed the referendum to happen, that’s why we vote for a government in the first place.

The leave bubble has burst and now the reality has been shown, many leave voters want to remain.

Followed by the hope that the result can be nullified:

Scotland will veto the result;

Scotland will become independent;

MPs don’t need to accept the result;

Liberal Democrats pledge to ignore the result and keep Britain in the EU;

EU referendum rules should trigger a second referendum.

Hope is what I seem to be lacking this morning. We have a PM that has resigned which on the one hand looks reasonable because he is taking responsibility for his mistakes, but on the other hand looks policitical in that he avoids being seen as the person to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and gains time (and creates a poisioned challice?) by passing that responsibility to his successor. We have a lack of Brexit leaders willing to fulfill their claims of what what was going to happen to “all” the money we sent to the EU. We have the EU requesting the UK leaves as soon as possible to get over the uncertainty of the current position.

No hope and plenty of uncertainty. That path leads to depression. Am I depressed? Yes I think I am, but I will struggle on and rather than sit on my own, will get on my bike and enjoy the company of friends and bask a bit in the sunshine. My friends will ease the pain and maybe give me a bit of hope. And when I am on my own afterwards, I will try to motivate myself to do some manual jobs. Each step will lead me to my next encounter with friends and it will only be the lonlines of dawn that I will have to confront by myself.